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We moved into this house in August 2008 with three kids and moved out in July 2014 – three days (!!!) before our sixth child was born. It had all but completely fallen apart on us over those six years, so we have poured our hearts, minds, energy, and money into this place. We love how it turned out, and can’t wait to see how the new owners take it to the next level! (It’s currently on the market; if you’re looking for a beautifully renovated 3 bedroom, 2 bath home on 10.2 acres in southwest Michigan, I’ve got a place for you! But act quickly, because activity has been hot on this place.)

These are all real estate listing pictures – befores from the previous owners, afters from the current listing. Just pics today; details in future posts.

EXTERIOR

Exterior Before

Exterior After

Exterior After

Exterior After

Exterior After

KITCHEN

Kitchen Before

Kitchen After

Kitchen After

Kitchen After

GREAT ROOM

Great Room Before

Great Room Before

Great Room After

Great Room After

Great Room After

Great Room After

DINING ROOM/DEN

Dining Room/Den Before

Dining Room/Den After

ENTRY

Entry Before

Entry After

MAIN BATHROOM

Main Bathroom Before

Main Bathroom After

LOWER LEVEL BATHROOM

Lower Level Bathroom Before

Lower Level Bathroom After

FAMILY ROOM

Family Room Before

Family Room After

Family Room After

BEDROOMS

Master Bedroom Before

Master Bedroom After

Master Bedroom After

Bedroom 2 Before

Bedroom 2 After

Bedroom 2 After

Bedroom 3 Before

Bedroom 3 After

Bedroom 3 After

LAUNDRY/UTILITY ROOM (no before)

Laundry/Utility Room After

DECK

Deck Before

Deck After

Deck After

PASTURE/PROPERTY

Pole Barn Before

Pole Barn After

Pasture Before

Pasture Before

Pasture Before

Pasture After

Pasture After

Pasture After

DRIVEWAY/WOODS/FRONT YARD (no after)

We had our first day of (home)school on September 2, 2014. After a two week break due to the pukeys (so fun with such a big family!!) and getting our “old” house on the market, we’re back at it. I will try to update with a homeschool curriculum post soon, but for now, here’s a pic of my students for this year – our first year on the front steps of our new house. Sniff. Bittersweet!

We had a baby! Lyra Luca was born at home on July 17, 2014 at 12:34 p.m. (coolest time: 1-2-3-4, get it?). She was 7 lbs. 2 oz., 20″ long, and was born in just over two hours with one push. We moved into our new house just three days before she was born and are still recovering. 🙂 Our old split entry 1975 farmhouse has been completely renovated and is on the market – stay tuned for a post on that!

Lyra is precious, growing fast, and completely adored around here. Thanks be to God for His wonderful gifts! (Follow me on Instagram if you’d like more updates than what you’re getting on the blog lately. 🙂

(When you have free-range chickens AND snap a pic at sunset, your pancake looks super yellow!)

Whew. How’s that for a title?!

We’ve been making and enjoying Dutch Babies for a long time around here. It started with my husband and I sharing the standard 3 egg version, baked in a cast iron skillet, with our lone toddler Maya. Delish. Nowadays, I make (are you ready for this?) the equivalent of 8 times that recipe for the seven of us. This is basically the recipe I use, only I use 1 tsp course kosher salt and start checking for doneness around 20 min. We usually use some form of whole grain flour. But not always…

Now, with me being gluten- and milk-free (I can still tolerate butter, cheese, yogurt), I have had to experiment with a version I can enjoy. And since I’m lazy and try to stick to whole grains, I also had to convert it to a blender batter (no pulling out the gluten-contaminated grain mill). Here’s the version I am enjoying now.

NOTES
* Obviously, you can make this with gluten and dairy while still enjoying the convenience of the blender. Just use about 3/4 cup of whole wheat grains (or experiment with barley, spelt, etc.) and 1 cup milk of your choice.
* I usually use unsweetened almond milk.
* I use our own farm fresh eggs and make a double batch, which just fits in the Vitamix without overflowing. Since our eggs can vary in size, I often use 13 (which is more than double, of course).
* You can also skip the blender entirely and substitute 1 cup of your favorite gluten-free flour blend for the whole grains.
* Try other GF grains. Brown rice goes well with oats. Or try brown rice + millet.

Howdy, folks! How’ve you been? Now that it’s April, we’re finally enjoying a day or two of spring weather once in a while. (Of course, it’s supposed to snow tonight. Longest. Winter. Ever! But 50s and sunny on Sunday, so I can endure it.) I hope the weather is delightful wherever you are.

We have one Sh-Mop and 12 cotton terry mop heads. I love this thing. (affiliate link)

So I finally put together a bathroom cleaning checklist for my older girls, ages nine and 11. I think this list is appropriate for children ages seven and up, give or take. I thought I would share it here for two reasons: 1 – It may help you or be useful, and 2 – You can critique it and tell me what I forgot. Download it here:

Our bathroom cleaner is either a natural cleaner purchased at the store on sale or a homemade one made with half vinegar, half water + essential oils of choice (I like tea tree, orange, and/or lemon for bathroom cleaning) in a spray bottle.

We do use standard sanitizing wipes from the store. There are more natural versions, such as those made by Seventh Generation, that we have also used, but they get expensive. This is one of the only places you will see us use disposable, conventional cleaning products. Viruses and bathroom germs make me a little crazy.

Seventh Generation Natural Sanitizing Wipes (affiliate link)

We don’t make or buy a special window/mirror cleaner because a microfiber cloth works great. I have friends that use Norwex (also microfiber) cloths, too, and they like them. I just use the ones I already have. Dry microfiber is great for removing streaks and cloudiness.

Lest you think I only change my hand towel once a week, allow me to reassure you: I change it once every 1-2 days, whenever I’m in there and thinking about it. With five children and only one main bathroom, it gets gross quickly, so I just change it myself.

Why don’t the kids scrub the toilet and mop the floors? Good question. They are capable and those items could easily be incorporated into the kid list. But for our house, this works best. I like to mop the floors all at once myself or with family help, and it becomes a hassle to ask them to get out the Schmop and make a floor cleaning solution in the sink separately from when I do it. Just easier to fill the sink once a week myself and do all the hard floors at once (and our whole house is hard floors, by the way). As for the toilet, I’ve found that children often splash more germs out of the toilet than they actually clean, especially when they’re younger. Definitely something they should be trained to do, but again, I tend to clean the toilet several times a week myself when I’m thinking of it or noticing it. Takes me a minute or less. I think children of this age can easily be be taught to do these tasks, if that works better for your family.

If you find this checklist useful and would like more, or if you have critical feedback to leave, please comment. I wanna know how your kids are cleaning the bathrooms.

I am currently 14 weeks pregnant and feeling less like death warmed over. But not much. Baby Tomato is due in July (tomato season, see?) and I’m looking forward to my first summer birth. Maybe an outside one? (Let’s not dwell on the HOT that is a summer pregnancy. Nope.) The girls are lobbying for a girl, and the boys want a boy, of course. We grown ups are praying for healthy and full term.

We are all doing well and finally using that lower level family room that we started working on last spring. It’s great!

I am currently sipping tea and hiding under a blanket. There be sub-zero wind chills and blizzard-like conditions out there, yo. Stay warm!

What we thought was a sure thing (moving to town behind the church where my husband is assistant pastor) turned out not to be. Thankfully, we are fairly good at rolling with the punches. We are at peace with our decision to walk away from the house. There was a huge lack of trust that developed after the inspection revealed some big misrepresentations in the real estate listing. We couldn’t get to a price that we all agreed with. And so we terminated our agreement.

We are truly grateful for the chance to step back and reflect. It allowed us to think, pray, ponder…and we realized the house was no longer worth it for us. God is good and we are fine. We look forward to finishing up the projects we have here at the country house and staying here as long as we can. When I see the kids wander our acreage, exploring and playing together, I know we will be just fine.

To close, a letter my husband wrote to the congregation this week:

Dear beloved friends:

If you have not heard me say it yet, our family is very grateful for the congregation’s agreement to sign the purchase agreement for us to get the yellow house through [church lending institution]. We are humbled and grateful. The extra work required of church staff, the prayers, and the special voters’ assembly touched us with your love and care in a very special way.

Unfortunately, I need to write you now to tell you that the deal is not going to go through. The inspections have been completed, some negotiations followed, and the result is that the agreement has been terminated.

Sometimes, the shortest path between two points is a zigzag, as the people of Israel discovered in their trek from Egypt to Sinai, and later to Canaan. The move to the yellow house seemed to be a clear path for us to live closer to the hub of church ministry, to have a better arrangement for family bedrooms and storage, and to reduce our monthly expenses. It turned out not to be the path we were to take, though I am confident that God will use the experience to help our family clarify our desires and goals for any future housing improvements or changes.

Thank you for your patience during this process. We never intended to draw the whole congregation into an experience of disappointment. We were excited about what we thought was going to happen, but God surely has better plans in mind.

You may be interested in learning more details of why we are not getting the home. Publicly, I will limit my comments to this: The inspections uncovered that the home would have required more work and expense than we initially expected and the listing initially indicated. We could not come to an agreement on a reduced price and we were not comfortable with the amount of work that would be needed.

Please continue to pray for our family’s wisdom in housing decisions; and please accept my personal apology for any confusion or disappointment this whole experience has caused.

Big changes. Fast and furious ones. While we are heartbroken over leaving our gorgeous acreage, this new house suits our family so much better – four bedrooms on the second floor (SILAS WILL HAVE A NURSERY and there aren’t big enough capital letters for the excitement over the sleep I plan on getting), two living spaces on the main floor (one for homeschool!), a basement for rec space/craft space/storage), a fenced yard for the six city chickens and small garden we will have, and the biggie – 30 second commute to church for Jason. That there’s the church in our backyard.

There’s already a gate in the fence. It was meant to be.

The kitchen as it looks right now. Lots of customizing opportunities here! And there’s that black-and-white coil top stove that seems to be a mandatory item for any home I move into…

Of course, it’s a mixed blessing. We are honest with ourselves re: the disappointment over leaving the country, but we are also very expectant of the great benefits of city living – more walkable, greatly reduced transportation costs, the ability to support local farms with our finances and time. We plan to stay active at the local farms we’ve come to love. Our chickens will be living with friends, with full visitation rights. We will go hiking and be outside as much as possible. We can walk to the grocery store! And the children will have access to the church’s property without even crossing the street, including the school’s playgrounds.

We are blessed by the new house. We won’t be moving until February (earliest), as there is much work to be done before we can move in. (We apparently love to buy houses with lots of disgusting carpet to rip out!). Then we’ll get this current house all ready to sell to the next owners – now that everything is brand new and just how I like it. I’m getting pretty good at designing a lovely new kitchen for some other lucky cook to enjoy!

Hot pink family bath! Our daughters want to paint it immediately, whereas our 6yo son thinks it’s an awesome color. You just never know what they’re gonna like. (For the record, it’s getting painted FIRST THING.)

We would love your thoughts and prayers as we anticipate a whole lot of home improvement projects in the coming months, in addition to that not-so-small task of moving the worldly goods of seven people across town. (I’m seriously thinking of just bringing the beds, a week’s worth of clothes for every season, and perhaps a sofa, and all the kitchen stuff–and just donating the rest to charity. Wouldn’t that be so much easier?!) Not sure how it will all get done, but I have confidence that it will. Somehow.

Bulletproof coffee (originally seen here) is a fantastic concept that I’ve really enjoyed playing around with. I was really craving a good PSL with pure pumpkin, and this is what I came up with. This recipe is an S, for those following the plan.

TIPS:
**I have successfully reduced the butter to 1 tsp when I want a less rich treat.
**I use a hand (immersion) blender in wide mouth mason jar with a towel wrapped around it. (Time to knit a jar cozy!)
**If you are not following Trim Healthy Mama, or if you are at goal weight, try 1-2 TBSP pure maple syrup as your sweetener. So rich and delicious!
**To get the pumpkin maple flavor without the sugar, I’m going to add maple extract next time.
**Replace the whey protein with heavy cream or coconut milk for a different creamy flavor. I like the whey protein to jump start my day, and it’s surprisingly creamy.
** I’ve been making coffee with an Aeropress and liking it a lot. It works well with this method.

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Hi there! I'm Serina, homeschooling mom to seven and wife to a pastor/engineer. We live on a grassy knoll at the edge of a very brambly wood. We like to grow and create - art, plants, animals, memories, stories, songs. We are makers, builders, writers, readers, thinkers, and dreamers. Literature, music, and food are central to our home. Welcome to my online journal.